That’s what happened to District 7 City Council hopeful Mari Aguirre-Rodriguez two months ago, shortly after she launched her campaign against incumbent Councilman Cris Medina. With an Aircast on her left foot, however, she hobbled to enough homes in the Northwest Side district to squeak into a June 13 runoff with Medina.

A positive thinker — and Aguirre-Rodriguez certainly projects positivity in the face of cursed luck — would say that her painful fracture enabled her to join the pantheon of successful S.A. politicians who suffered serious election-year foot injuries.

In 2006, Joe Farias was the Democratic nominee for Texas House District 118, locked in a tight general-election race with Republican rival George Antuna. While Farias was block-walking on the South Side, he landed badly on his left foot and had to be helped to a car by a campaign worker.

Farias had torn a ligament in his foot and spent the final two months of the campaign going from home to home with a medical walking boot on the foot.

“It was a pretty severe limitation on his ability to walk,” recalls his son, West San Antonio Chamber of Commerce President Gabe Farias. “But he put a boot on and worked his tail off. It showed the resolve this guy had.”

Farias won the election by 900 votes.

In 2012, one month after Leticia Van de Putte cruised to her fifth consecutive election win in Texas Senate District 26, she traveled to Washington, D.C., for a state lawmakers conference and a White House summit on human trafficking. While walking in D.C., Van de Putte stepped in a puddle and broke her foot. Four days later, she had surgery on it.

As for Aguirre-Rodriguez, 36, she tumbled while walking to her table at a local restaurant.

“I was in my favorite pair of wedges, every girl’s nightmare, and I just slipped and fell,” Aguirre-Rodriguez said with a laugh. “It was during a business lunch, so it was kind of embarrassing.”

Aguirre-Rodriguez shed her cast right around the time that early voting started for the May 9 municipal election, and her campaign has become considerably more ambulatory in recent weeks. For all the discomfort and inconvenience that came with her injury, however, it also served as a useful icebreaker.

“People would open the door and say, ‘Oh, my God, I feel so bad for you.’ I’d tell people, ‘If this doesn’t show perseverance, I don’t know what does,’ and they would laugh,” Aguirre-Rodriguez said.

There are two ways to look at Aguirre-Rodriguez’s distant second-place finish in the May 9 election.

With Medina earning 47 percent of the vote to her 28 percent, the runoff race carries echoes of 2011, when Medina narrowly fell short of winning the District 7 election outright, then carried the runoff easily.

On the other hand, Medina wasn’t an incumbent then, so non-Medina voters weren’t necessarily rejecting the status quo when they chose other candidates. This year, many of them might have been.

The lesson for future S.A. candidates is this: Hire a savvy campaign manager, start early with your fundraising and, above all else, get yourself a good podiatrist.

City committed to completing veterans center

A few weeks ago, this column looked at a planned Veterans Outreach and Transition Center on the East Side, which has been in a state of limbo since its 2013 groundbreaking because projected construction costs are $2.2 million beyond what has been allocated by the city.

Since then, city representatives have emphasized they are committed to making sure the center — located at the historic site of the old Good Samaritan Hospital — opens as promised.

Although the city has allocated $3.2 million over the years for construction work, the project, a partnership between the city and St. Philip’s College, has faced challenges because of escalating cost projections.

Di Galvan, communications director for the city, said the city has found $500,000 from NuStar Energy and is trying to secure a $600,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“We’ve continued to identify funds and we’re still working on funding that gap and we have made some progress,” Galvan said. “This is really important to the city, and for anyone to think the city is not involved or wanting this to happen, it’s not an accurate picture.”